Playing with fire. I play with fire regularly. Not the typical webster definition of the wood and oxygen and flames and sticks and air and heat and those things. No I play with fire. The type that can burn you more than just on your skin. The first and second and third types so deep so below the surface of the abyss of you that when you play- you play with fire- the risk is great. But somehow worth doing. Worth the risk of the burn again. I like to live on the edge or so I say. Mostly I push buttons. Mostly I say things I shouldn’t. Mostly I say too much. Mostly I am too honest. Mostly I am just playing with fire even if I don’t know it. Sometimes. But sometimes I know it and still do it. Say something that will make my heart beat or stop the pulse-the pace-the flow of the room but I still do it.
I started to think about when this started. It’s hard to say. It’s hard to remember when I thought it was fun to play with fire. I didn’t understand the boundaries, of child, or girl, or white, or woman, or working class or pretty or smart or any of the other titles I have been bestowed upon by birth, by social constructs, by my genetics, by so much that is not choice and so much that is. See it is hard to remember when I started playing with fire because I was an adult child. I was the negotiator between my parents as long as I could remember. Dad on one side Mom on the other and me in between. Always. I had honest conversations about my life-about who I wanted to live with and where and when before I was done with the 3rd grade. No child can answer these questions. I looked into the judge’s face, the therapist face, my own private lawyers face at 8, my aunts, my doctors face all saying the same thing I want to live with both my parents. All the faces the same. All the words the same.
It is hard to know boundaries of age if no one instills them in you. It is hard to know boundaries of gender if no one tells you women shouldn’t act this way. Because as much we pretend we have changed, progressed- a woman and what it means to be one fits perfectly in a neat little box on top of that shelf. Still it does. If you only smile and looked pretty life would be so much easier for you. I have heard more than once.
I play with fire. But I remember the first time I played with fire not with my family but with my peers. See my parents- divorced or not- together or not- my dad with or without a new girlfriend weren’t rolling in the dough. My dad started his job 3 months before my mother gave birth to me. He climbed telephone poles and climbed his way up without a degree or an almost degree to manage systems and the such. But we were poor. Not poor like starving poor. More like we had a Volkswagen before they were cool- two of them- and I would force my father to park down the street from school to drop me off as to not have anyone see my car. I didn’t realize I was being a shit. Then of course I didn’t. I was embarrassed of that car. And the roar of it. Dad please just drop me off at the corner. I never admitted why. I didn’t want to see his face, his hard working face, look at me with despair.
So when my parents- more like my dad and his girlfriend allowed me to get my first acid washed jean jacket-I was side pony tailed and gummy bracelet and legging out full of joy and beyond belief. I probably sang a rendition of my own personal Madonna in celebration. I wore that jacket- my coolest item- the coolest item- the item that anyone who was anyone was wearing. I wore it with pride like I once wore my green izzy kid outfit or the badges for most cookies sold as a girl scout. The pride I had for being cool. My father reminded me to put my name in it. Just in case he said. Just in case you lose it. I probably rolled my eyes at him. My green glass eyes, my mothers. Every time he looks at me he must remember. Or does he? He never says. I would be rolling my 9-year-old eyes as he provided me with his black sharpie from his toolbox or art supplies. For my father had all the answers. At one time I thought he did. Even though I played fire with so many things he did tell me.
I wore that jacket as if it was my pride and joy my second skin of acceptance in the 80s-I might have even popped that collar before I knew that was reserved for the preppies. And so I wore it for a week until until I lost it. Of course I lost it. I left it out at recess while I was running my skinny ass around playing something I am sure tetherball or handball or something with a ball. And after recess I returned to where I had thrown it on the ground and to my dismay. Gone. Nothing. Tons of jackets. Piled but mine was missing. There was only the pavement, hot from the afternoon sun, painted partially from the wear of playing.
Shit, shit, shit. I decided it was time to act. I asked my friends and classmates my teachers and anyone who would listen. I went to the lost and found until they told me don’t call us we will call you. I made reward posters. I posted them in the hope that it would return to me. Return it did. But only because I played with fire. After I posted the posters everyone at hahn school knew kate b. had lost her jean jacket. Her cool.
So when I saw that girl, that girl in my jacket at recess. I had no other choice than to. To take my 65 pound-4 foot-something self over and tell her- take off that jacket. She was older than me but I didn’t care. If I could redo it I would say look bitch take off my acid washed jean jacket. Now. Instead she bought time. Playing with fire practiced so I didn’t give up. Take off the jacket-it’s mine. I knew without a doubt that was the flesh and blood of cool, my cool. Look take it off and if it doesn’t say my name- it’s yours. We did the 4th v. 6th grade stare down. And eventually she saw the fire in my eyes and realized she shouldn’t play with a girl’s first love of the jean. She took it off and there there in the black sharpie eye rolled upon it was the words- kate b.
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